Summary of the Darpa site event: Stanford

Sebastian Thrun, Professor of Computer Science, Stanford, and Mike Montemerlo, Technical Director, Stanford Racing Team, discuss how they felt Stanford did in the 4 different tests for the 2007 Darpa Urban Challenge. Stanford passed all 4, but had to redo one due to a technicality involving cones.

From wikipedia.org:

The DARPA Grand Challenge is a prize competition for driverless cars, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the central research organization of the United States Department of Defense. Congress has authorized DARPA to award cash prizes to further DARPAs mission to sponsor revolutionary, high-payoff research that bridges the gap between fundamental discoveries and their use for national security. DARPA has sponsored two competitions and announced a third using the “Grand Challenge” prize authority, all in the area of autonomous vehicles. DARPA is not restricted from conducting Grand Challenge competitions in other areas in the future.

Both the first and second DARPA Grand Challenge competitions advanced the technologies needed to create the first fully autonomous ground vehicles capable of completing a substantial off-road course within a limited time. The third event, The DARPA Urban Challenge, scheduled to take place November 3, 2007, further advances vehicle requirements to include autonomous operation in a mock urban environment.